What Floats Through The Pool

Last week our staff had a chance to attend a training by the person from the UW who works with the data collectors about the Environment Rating Scale.

As you saw in the last blog post, and as I have been constantly telling my Early Achievers sites, the UW scores for the ERS have been coming in much lower than expected.  This was a chance to hear about some of the common issues that are causing the low scores.

I asked if it was OK to have some talking points ready for the interview so that programs can mention items that might not be observed, and she said yes – so have them ready!

Speaking about what items they consider “accessible” to children, she said they always think about the idea of “What floats through the pool”.  What materials actually come out and are used by the children, or are clearly available for them to use. 

A surprising item that is lowering scores is the use of keypads for entry to child care centers.  So many buildings that are completely handicapped accessible have security keypads, and the UW has been trained to count that as not accessible since it requires the use of fingers.   I would suggest to those programs that have this situation, that you create a talking point for your interview about how you have a receptionist within view of the door at all times that will buzz any person with limited use of fingers in so they would not need to use the keypad.

Blocks must be at least 2 inches on all sides to be counted as blocks.  Tiny blocks would fit into fine motor instead.  And as I have already told you all, duplos/leggos are only counted in fine motor.  And an new update for the ITERS block section is you can take N/A if all children are under 18 months.

Ample space – they have been told to identify that as space so large there is actually unused space.

Cubbies seem to be a common problem.  They will be looking for each child to have a cubby that can fit all their personal items with no cross contamination at all.  Nothing touching another child’s items.

In the ITERS helping children use language, in the 5’s, they will be looking for nouns/verbs, and in the 7’s. adjectives /adverbs.  In 5.1 they will look to see that staff respond to the children at least 75% of the time.  In 5.3 on the same page, they will be looking for so many interactions, they could not be counted.

A great update is that for ability diversity in books, pictures and materials, even glasses will count.  Should be easy to find some books with glasses, put glasses in dramatic play, and include pictures with people wearing glasses.

Not as great news is that the Montessori works involving water are not counted as water play.

Those were the notes I took at the training.  I’ll share more as I hear them.  Remember that it is very important to always read the notes for clarification in your ERS spirals, and to check their website form new notes for clarification after the publication of the spirals    http://www.ersi.info/index.html